Tuesday, 27 April 2010

27/4

The Building of the Hellenic Centre in the heart of London was occupied earlier this afternoon. 2 banners were flying on the roof and the balcony of the building. The banners said: ‘Freedom to Dimitrakis and to all Anarchists’; the 2nd writes ‘Honour to Lambros Fountas’ ‘Freedom to the 6′, and the 3rd banner 'Fire to the prisons! Freedom to Alfredo Bonanno and Christos Stratigopoulos!'

The 6 refers to the 6 anarchists arrested a few days ago accused by the cops of participating in the ‘Revolutionary Stuggle’; Lambros Fountas is the anarchist who was killed by the police in March and Giannis Dimitrakis is the anarchist who is in jail doing 35 years for a bank robbery. Today there was a call for international solidarity to Dimitrakis as his appeal trial starts tomorrow.

Monday, 26 April 2010

A few days ago the application of A.Bonnano and Ch.Stratigopoulos for release on bail was denied and it was decided that they must stay in jail for a another 6 months.

Especially in A. Bonanno's case, the extension of his imprisonment was decided in spite of various doctors pointing out (the prison doctor as well as outside doctors that examined him) his very serious health situation.

Thursday, 8 April 2010

Last Tuesday, March 23rd, a few hundred fliers were handed out at the entrance, inside and around the Commercial and Economic Section of the Greek Embassy in Lisbon, in the area of Saldanha.The text of the flier:

« Freedom for all, in Greece and everywhere.

It’s true, the situation in Portugal is the same as in Greece. Populations living in poverty, on a daily misery in which we feel life turning into survival, at the same time that bosses and banks rob us of each moment and each place that used to be ours. Police, courts and prisons for those who dare to confront that misery and, increasingly, even for those who do not confront it at all. People that with a disgusting regularity are persecuted, beaten or murdered with shots by the police, because we all are a potential threat, no more no less, because the State has the authority and the weapons and the fear of revolt. Prisons that efficiently do their job: to eliminate dignity, to serve as a warehouse of undesirables, to give the example, to execute rebelliousness. To execute, plain and simply.

But in Portugal, as in Greece, as everywhere, there are those who do not stay still in the face of this system of exploitation, of oppression, of the elimination of everything that still breaths freely. There are those who put despair and resignation away, and grab life with nails and teeth, going for the attack.

Christos Stratigopoulos and Alfredo Maria Bonanno are only two of those individuals, arrested on October 2009, following a bank robbery in Trikala, Greece. Regardless of the crimes they are being charged with, the struggle for freedom is the crime they’ve always committed.

We want to denounce, in particular, the abusive detention of Alfredo M. Bonanno under unacceptable conditions in the prison of Koridallos (Athens), worsened even more with the attempt to frame him up with another bank robbery on July 2009. The politics of vengeance of the State has the aim of eliminating physically and psychologically this comrade of 73 years old who faces serious health problems. Alfredo Bonanno is an anarchist, involved in the movement since decades ago, active in the resistance against the dictatorship of the Greek colonels (1967-1974), and writer and editor of many anarchist texts. These are the true reasons for which they keep him in prison under conditions that endanger his life.

We demand the immediate release of Alfredo Maria Bonanno.For the destruction of all prisons.

Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Friday March 26, in the ambit of the international solidarity initiatives for Alfredo Bonanno, a presidium was held in Rome near the Greek embassy. This predium had the precise aim of demanding his immediate release.Alfredo, 73 year old anarchist comrade, finds himself kidnapped by the Greek state since last October, and is presently held in the prison of Koridallos in Athens. He is accused of concourse in bank robbery with another comrade, Christos Stratigopoulos, who immediately took full responsability concerning the robbery, attempted at a bank in the town of Trikala. In fact, Alfredo is being held now for reasons that are explicitly linked, even in the court papers in where they refused to release him some months ago, to his political identity as an anarchist. On this and the serious health conditions that he unfortunately finds himself in, is based the new request for his release, for which a hearing took place on Friday morning at the regional court of Larissa.For Christos the lawyers made no demands because he has nothing to ask of the judges.Because he is anarchist, Alfredo has our unconditional solidarity.Because he is unwell, we must obtain his liberation.Immediately.Around 9am a group of comrades had an appointment in the Parioli quarter, where there are many embassies. Awaiting them was (the demo had been called publicly) a considerable assortment of police: carabinieri and police in antiriot gear coordinated by about twenty plain clothes officers. You could say the ratio was about 5 to 1. And that the orders on how to direct the situation came from above. The presidium was blocked from any possibility of getting directly in front of the embassy, which is why we stayed at two roundabouts, with amplification and various interventions to block the traffic and hand out texts that we include below. On the other hand, the fact that the area had been militarized had in itself created attention and alarm in all those who were passing by, to the point of even making some representatives of the Greek embassy come out into the street, rigorously behind the line of cops.When the presidium disbanded slogans and posters appeared on the walls in solidariety to the comrades and in memory of Lambros Foundas, the comrade murdered by the police in Athens on March 10, following a shootout.To conclude, considering it necessary however to say something about initiatives of this kind, we repeat the words of the comrades who in London last February, paid a visit to the Greek embassy for the same reasons, saying that "this small demonstration of solidarity had the aim of showing the Greek State that our imprisoned comrades are not alone. We know perfectly well that, in the struggle against repression and in support of our imprisoned comrades, these kind of actions are futile in themselves, and should therefore be placed in the context of a wider and extended projectuality of international solidarity aimed at the generalisation of the attack on the existent". We point out that the judges, in Greece, from Friday 26 are in procinto of sentencing on the fate of Alfredo.....Comrades of the AntiAuthoritarian Assembly of Rome.

One of the leaflets handed out...

We are adverse to human relationships that are flat, functional, useful. Those for whom trust is turned into faith, generosity into exchange of favours, solidarity into interest, respect into submission. But we don’t have time, or interest, to wait for a different cultural system, a new leader or some modern messiah to change the situation.We don’t believe in other lives, therefore what we want, we want it now. Human relations that are mediated by the institutions or by imposed moral behaviour is not for us. The squalid practice of looking first at a person’s wallet and then their eyes, is the habit of a society where everything is reduced to numbers, quantity, profit. In this bloodcurdling human scenario we well know on whose side we are on, and it is certainly not a bank account to suggest it to us. And it is among those who do not resign themselves to a life of obedience and resignation, their own and that of others, that we find fraternal glances and complicity, comrades, male and female. We should be interested to learn that the persons whose liberation we are demanding are guilty of an attempted bank robbery? Well, that’s not so. We are not interested. At least not in the measure in which this should lead us to see tham as miserable abjects. But if precisely we were to express ourselves on the subject, having always supported the pirates since we were tiny, think what words of disdain we would be able to pronounce!!?? Not one. At best we would be rammaricati by the fact that they didn’t succeed in cleaning out that bank. But that’s not the point.Christos and Alfredo are our comrades, and as such we think that they deserve our support, our solidarity. They often try to pass of the latter for inclinations which those that are labelled degenerate terrorists dedicate themselves to. On the other hand, the misery of this order prefers little men and little women, egoist, closed up in their little world of objects. That is also why we want to do away with this authoritarian order.That is why we are deaf to the sentences expressed by its institutions, that wants to teach us who are the good and who the bad.We hear instead loud and clear the cry of freedom and the frastuono of their passions as they lead those who have not resigned themselves.FREEDOM FOR ALFREDO M. BONANNO AND XRISTOS STRATIGOPOULOS HELD IN CUSTODY IN THE ATHENS PRISON OF KORIDALLOS SINCE 1°OCTOBER 2009 ACCUSED OF HAVING ROBBED A BANKRome, March 2010 AntiAuthoritarianAssembly

Friday, 2 April 2010

31/3/10 Wednesday An unknown person claimed resposibility for the arson attack on Emporiki bank in Greece with a phone call to "eleftherotipia" newspaper saying:"Terrorists are the banks and capitalists. Immediate release of Alfredo Bonnano,whose ongoing imprisonment equals his physical extermination considering his age (73 now) and his health situation.Freedom to C.Stratigopoulos,to Dimitrakis and to Voutsis-Vogiatzis.May the fires we light dry our tears for the murder of comrade Lambros Foundas".